


the baffled king, composing

by multicorn



Category: Glee
Genre: Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:25:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multicorn/pseuds/multicorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Dalton burns down, symbol and refuge and job all in one, Blaine puts his feelings into music, and the words into other peoples' hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the baffled king, composing

**Author's Note:**

> Also [here on tumblr](http://the-multicorn.tumblr.com/post/113311422475/fic-the-baffled-king-composing-kurt-blaine).

Dalton had burned to the ground.

It didn't feel real.  Not when he'd heard on the phone, from the headmaster, interrupting his carefree if hastily-planned honeymoon with news of an utterly unforeseen disaster, not when he'd repeated it over and over to Kurt in the plane on their way back home in an attempt to somehow fit it into his mind.  Not even when he had started getting messages from his boys - _Mr. Anderson, I'm going back home for a while_ , and _Mr. Anderson, what do we do now_  - though they make it feel more immediate, more urgent, as the hours roll ever so slowly on.  Even looking at the smoking ruins that were once his school, his home, his place of refuge, the place he met the love his life, and now his job.... it feels like something out of a bad dream.  There's nothing that can be done to fix this, but maybe he can wake up? 

Kurt dashes cold water on him - literally.He'd picked up a smoldering ember, without even realizing it.Fuck.And now he's wet, and cold, and looks ridiculous, in the chill November breeze, and he just wants to go home.

~

They don't even know what caused the fire.That's one of the worst parts.If there'd been even the hint of an enemy's hand, Blaine could've refocused on that, and vengeance, and not letting anyone, ever, get away with this.Instead, he's just left with the loss.

And eight boys left with a passion for show choir, who are all relying on him for a newhome.

He brings them to the New Directions.It's all he can do.He remembers, of course, though it was a long time ago, exactly how not-quite-welcoming McKinley High School's vaunted bastion of tolerance can be.But Kurt offers, and Mr. Schuester agrees without question - honestly, with just a little bit too much enthusiasm - and he doesn't have anywhere better to give them.He can't be a home for them, all by himself.

(He needs somewhere safe, too.)

~

As far as that goes -

He and Kurt are staying in the apartment he once shared with Dave, packing a few now-necessary things like kitchen implements out of boxes while also still finishing with packing everything else back in.Hoping to find a new place for their own before this month's lease runs out and they have to end up staying with Burt and Carole or with his parents for a while between times.It's awkward - at least Dave had in fact finished moving all his things out while he and Kurt were on their honeymoon, or it would've been awkwarder still - and stressful enough in terms of life transitions and juggling logistics even before his job had quite literally gone up in a burst of flame - 

and the headmaster had said that they couldn't afford to keep paying everyone, in light of the cost that rebuilding would be, he's sure that Blaine would understand - 

and both Kurt and his parents had immediately tried to reassure him that it didn't matter -

but at least he doesn't have to go to work today.The Warblers are safely ensconced at McKinley.Kurt had asked if he was sure he didn't want to come along, but when he'd said that he'd rather stay home today had simply kissed him goodbye, and now he's left alone in an apartment with about eighty percent fewer rainbows than it had when he'd first moved in, and a plastic unicorn head mounted over the keyboard that reminds him of distant friends.

His life has burned down to ashes, technically, for the second time.First with Kurt and NYADA, and now with everything that Dalton is.But it doesn't feel like last time at all.He can't taste the ashes in his mouth.

And he can still make music.

~

He plays all day.On and off, of course, but mostly on.He sings until his voice gets tired, then switches to instrumental versions, and music, bits and pieces of classical stuff on the keyboard until his fingers complain, and he stretches them out and starts humming again, as he moves around the apartment aimlessly.

Eventually he runs out of songs.Not out of songs he knows, of course.But out of songs that sound right.That capture both the heartbreak he feels at the loss of Dalton, years of tradition and his life burned down, and the glint of steel skeleton he feels at the fact that it can't break him, not this time.And then there's the context for that strength of hope too, the memory of those awful months without Kurt, without his friends, without Dave, without anyone, first in New York and then in Lima and then finally finding a place to help him, a name of a thing that he can hold on to when the darkness comes seeping in again, that form his baseline of what devastation feels like and help him know that he can not only get through this, but everything.

He was never really able to sing about those months, before.But with the weight of Dalton crashing down - with how very much it means to him, in so many ways, future and past as well as present - he can't avoid it anymore.

Usually when he gets to the end of his mental jukebox catalog he flips back through it to find that one perfect song, to start to work on perfecting his performance of it, to let all his emotions of the moment safely run out.But now, thinking of the fire and the ashes, for the first time when he can still sing at all, none of the songs that he knows seems to hold quite enough.

He sings bits and pieces, trying to stitch things together - maybe a mashup?Of how many songs? - and goes back to the keyboard to work.Finds himself breaking them down to smaller and yet smaller pieces, all the way down to simple chord progressions which he knows from music theory class, and whose ambiguity seems powerfully suited to his present mood.He slides from one to another to another, letting himself _feel_ the way he always has with music making its way out through his hands and his mouth.

Goes back to play one sequence that catches him, again - and again - and again.

At some point Kurt comes home.They make dinner, together, and as they eat Kurt relates his struggle to integrate the former Warblers into the New Directions.Blaine tries to think of something to help - he does feel responsible, too - but the music he'd been working on is still playing in the back of his mind, distracting him.He ends up humming, just quietly, and Kurt looks at him inquiringly but harmonizes obligingly, and they sound even better that way, and he loves being with him again so much.

After washing up, after sex, because it's been so long and now that they can again it's kind of hard to resist, he goes back to the keyboard.It's addictive, somehow, putting together these little pieces of feelings into something that unites them all.When he pauses he can hear the tapping of Kurt's laptop in the other room....

He reaches for some paper.He usually just does arrangements, he's never composed music - is that really what this is? - before, but he wants to get it down, to make sure it doesn't slip away.And write down what everything means to him, too, what it is he feels from all this music, because sometimes he forgets - 

he writes notes, and words over the sections of notes, too, at first just labels like 'heartbreak' and 'hope,' but those don't get across nearly enough of the everything that he feels.He doesn't know what else to do, though.Feeling high but also frustrated, he pushes the paper away.He's gotten down as much as he has, and it's time to go to bed.

He husband's there, waiting for him.Which is its own kind of wonderful, despite everything, that this is something they have now, this one home he'll never lose again.He curls into the warmth of Kurt's side, lets Kurt wrap his arms around him, and tries to fall asleep.

He almost makes it.He's drifting off, the music from today playing in the back of his mind when he realizes that he's hearing words along to it, and he abruptly wakes up.Flips on the bedside light and scrabbles for the paper from earlier.

_Have you ever felt like you woke up on the wrong side of your heart -_

(yes, yes, that's it, all the time, although not anymore, not right now.But that's how it felt - !)

He goes back to the keyboard, and starts playing again, to get the rest of the words.He hopes that he's not waking Kurt up - one day they'll have multiple rooms, and maybe this keyboard should be in the living room, actually, but not now - there isn't time to do anything but play.And let the words, apparently, come.

 _We will rise above the ashes,_ he sings quietly, and writes it down.It feels like something he's done over and over, already, and so now he knows that it will happen.

And he keeps playing.Finding fragments of sentences to say all the things he wants to say - not instead of singing, but with singing, and his own words, too.It's, wow.Something new, maybe something really good.And when he turns around to stretch out for a second, he sees Kurt sitting up in bed, knees up to almost in front of his face, and arms circled around them, watching intently."It's beautiful," he says."Is it yours?"

"Yeah, I guess it is," Blaine says, surprised at himself, and at the surprise, both.He hadn't thought about it like that, yet."I was just playing around with stuff, but..." and he trails off, he doesn't know.

"Well, don't mind me," Kurt says."Please.Keep going."

And he turns back around, and he does, keeping Kurt's smile in his heart, too, the words and notes not going out to an empty room but to the man he loves, who's listening to him, right now, even if he can only speak like this.


End file.
